The whole gang

The whole gang

Friday, March 27, 2009

Aaaaccchhooo!




Bless you, or as C.J. used to say when he was little "flush you". Poor Chuckie has been sneezing so bad this past couple of months. It's driving Kyle crazy! And it's thanks to all these beautiful flowers in bloom. Sad that something so pretty could tickle your nose so intensly! These tulips are on my front porch and the African daisies are covering many of my neighbors yards. I just had to post a few of the flowers around our place, they are so pretty and last such a short time. I'm enjoying them, but . . . ah . . . ah . . . whew!


Sunday, March 22, 2009

Brandee's Birthday! (woohoo 19 Big Ones!)


Just some cute pictures of our beautiful Brandee on her special day! She celebrated with friends till long after midnight, then after a few hours of sleep, went with a friend to watch the sunrise on her special day! (sounds like college age life to me - no sleep!) Later we'll have Crab & Steaks (her favorite) and Cake & Ice Cream!
A cute story about Brandee. She loved crab from about 5 years old. (THAT was our mistake - letting her taste it!) She'd talk about it all the time, wanting us to make it for her. We couldn't really afford to have it be a regular dinner item, but we decided on her 7th birthday we'd take her to a fancy seafood restaraunt, Laundry's, and then go see Beauty and the Beast at Gammage.
We got to Laundry's and couldn't wait to see how much she was going to love this birthday dinner. Well she decided she was not in the mood for crab that night, so she is one of the rare few who has had a corndog at Laundry's. From then on she decided she loved Corndogs rather than Crab! However, she wouldn't go for corndogs for dinner tonight! (DARN)

Sunday, March 1, 2009

What brings home the bacon

I realized I've never written about our company. The other love of my hubby's life. We've had our company, C.B. Contracting, Inc. for over 13 years now, and started a sister company called K-12 Defense Consultants. I put that logo on cuz it looks cooler than C.B.'s logo. I know it sounds like something education related, but it is the highest crash rating system for a barrier which is pretty much what we do now; install barriers at different government facilities. We have done work at military bases, federal reserve buildings, FBI, court houses, dams, police stations, car rental places, etc. It's amazing to think of how our business has grown and changed, from cutting concrete, to doing curbs & gutters in the 80's & 90's and now to anti-terrorist security. From our office being in our laundry room, then bedroom, then home office, to a real away from home office. We have really been blessed by God with work to keep us busy, great employees who work hard, and talented office staff. Stephanie at the office is working right now on our website, which you can link to at the right top corner links. I'll have to post some pictures of our staff on here too. Just over a year ago it was only Danny, Josie and I in the office, while Chuck and the other guys were working abroad (Japan, Guam, England, etc.) We were so crazy busy and understaffed I thought I'd loose my mind. I've been doing the bookkeeping for a long time now, and we've just grown to where I needed some serious help. Along came Stephanie, and "she completes me", or at least lets me focus more on the accounting (which BTW Paul is studying in school & which I hope he'll take over for me someday)
We also get to share the office with Curt, Chuck's brother and his company. They've got a great bunch of people too. Sometimes we all re-enact scenes from "The Office" and have great laughs. Josie plays jokes on Brenda (she's Jim), Stephanie has wadded paper she throws at Danny, and Danny has hidden my cell phone in the past. I didn't punch a hole in the wall though. At times we all watch Chuck when he falls asleep in his chair, and laugh when he starts snoring! No he really works hard, and we appreciate him so much. He was really inspired to get into something more specialized. He's a genius when it comes to thinking up how to do things. I just love his engineering mind! Chuck has been pretty excited lately because they are working on changing the operations of the barriers in a way that will save money in maintenance on the systems as well as be more environmentally safe (GREEN is in!) Hopefully it will make us some GREEN, and keep us in operations through this tough economy.